The prediction proved true in less than ninety seconds.
Dragon Cores 06 and 08 dissolved into inert golden vapor. Then, the leftover three million units of stored spark and spiritual charge within the barrier’s western bus had nowhere to go. Cut off from their sky-high fading away coils, the massive transient surges raced backward down the heavy copper channels lining the outer edge, seeking the lowest path of physical pushback.
At Dragon Pylon 02, two leagues west of the central gate, the white jade foundation suddenly flared with blinding, violet incandescence.
CRACK.
A jagged arc of high-voltage back-emf—a bolt of raw, uncontained sky lightning four feet thick and carrying over two hundred thousand current units of current—erupted from the pylon’s base. The blinding arc leaped across the plain like a strike from an ancient war god, streaking straight toward the forward positions of Trench Sector 03, where five hundred mortal smiths were securing their copper mirrors.
“Lightning strike!” an apprentice screamed, throwing himself flat into the mud.
Lin Tao saw the flight path of the surge through his test sight array.
A direct grounding fault, Lin Tao realized in an instant. If that surge strikes the trench stone retaining walls, the copper mirror mountings will turn to steam. It burned to ash every craftsman in Sector Three.
